June | 2014 | Newb Quest

13 Jun

NewbQuest Ep.4: Richard Flanagan, Game Designer of Fract OSC

In this episode we interview game designer Richard Flanagan who is a member of the team who created FRACT OSC. FRACT is a musical puzzle exploration game for Mac and PC. FRACT is best imagined by asking: what if Myst and Tron had a baby that was a giant synthesizer you could wander around in? If that sounds awesome to you, you’ll really enjoy it.

For those interested in music and sound technology, particularly real time synthesis, the project is very interesting. The musical puzzles in the game combine pre-recorded music tracks with real time subtractive synthesizer sounds powered by Miller S. Puckette’s Pure Data (or PD) sound generation environment. This is an area of real time sound and music generation that I’ve been very interested to see pursued further in games and so was delighted to talk to Richard about it, along with the larger process of developing FRACT OSC.

You can subscribe and download the show via iTunes, and if you do I’d love it if you had time to leave an honest review.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

You can also check out the show via the NewbQuest YouTube channel, if you prefer that format. If you do I’d appreciate if you’d subscribe or leave a comment over there.

To learn more about Richard Flanagan and FRACT OSC head over to FractGame.com. If you enjoyed the interview the best way to support him and his team is to buy the game on steam.

09 Jun

The Art of Screenshake (with Unity 2D script)

Nuclear Throne by Vlambeer

This is a great presentation by Jan Willem Nijman of Dutch dynamic duo Vlambeer. He talks about crafting the feedback that your player receives when playing your game, including things like screenshake, camera movement and explosions. There are some very useful ideas in here. I put together a simple unity script aimed at Unity 2D which implements screenshake by moving the camera on collision which was inspired by this, grab it below.

To use this script:

Assets > Create > C# Script
Name the new script “CamShakeSimple” (as in the class name)
Add CamShakeSimple to the game object that will cause the shake, in this case it’s setup to shake the camera when this 2D object collides with something.
Drag your main camera into the newly visible slot in the inspector called “Main Camera”
Now when this object hits another it will use the relative velocity of that collision to shake the camera. Other ideas might include shaking the cam when you fire a bullet, fall from high up, or any number of things.
Note that if you’re using this in 3D you’ll want to remove the two instances of “2D” from the collision portion.

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class CamShakeSimple : MonoBehaviour 
{

    Vector3 originalCameraPosition;

    float shakeAmt = 0;

    public Camera mainCamera;

    void OnCollisionEnter2D(Collision2D coll) 
    {

        shakeAmt = coll.relativeVelocity.magnitude * .0025f;
        InvokeRepeating("CameraShake", 0, .01f);
        Invoke("StopShaking", 0.3f);

    }

    void CameraShake()
    {
        if(shakeAmt>0) 
        {
            float quakeAmt = Random.value*shakeAmt*2 - shakeAmt;
            Vector3 pp = mainCamera.transform.position;
            pp.y+= quakeAmt; // can also add to x and/or z
            mainCamera.transform.position = pp;
        }
    }

    void StopShaking()
    {
        CancelInvoke("CameraShake");
        mainCamera.transform.position = originalCameraPosition;
    }

}

To give credit where it’s due, this is a combination of code fragments from this thread:

http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/220407/damaging-a-car-depending-on-force-of-impact.html

and this one:

http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/46317/screen-shake-effect.html?sort=oldest

05 Jun

Pollen DevLog 2: Clouds, New Enemy Spawning, Sounds

Pollen is a game project I’m working on in Unity, it’s basically my first game and I’ve been working on it part time since October 2013 while teaching myself programming and game design fundamentals. I’m calling it a low poly butterfly action rogue-like like. It’s probably more ambitious of a project than I should have attempted as a first real thing but I am nothing if not ambitious. It’s been slow but I’ve also been teaching myself a lot of stuff in the process. It’s been deliciously fun. In this devblog I demonstrated my new sound effects, new clouds and new dragonfly enemy type. This is a short devblog where I show some gameplay and explain the latest stuff I’ve done.

05 Jun

NewbQuest Ep.3: Tarn Adams, Game Designer and Developer of Dwarf Fortress

In this episode we interview game developer Tarn Adams of Bay 12 Games who is working on Dwarf Fortress, a procedurally generated fantasy world game (look into CoinLooting site, to know the similar kind of games that are available in the game world) with an exceptionally long development cycle. For those who are unfamiliar Dwarf Fortress has been written about by The New York Times, installed in the MoMA and called “The Most Inscrutable Video Game of All Time” by Ars Technica.

From the New York Times Profile by Jonah Weiner:

This bare-bones aesthetic allows Tarn to focus resources not on graphics, but on mechanics, which he values much more. Many simulation games offer players a bag of building blocks, but few dangle a bag as deep, or blocks as small and intricately interlocking, as Dwarf Fortress. Beneath the game’s rudimentary facade is a dizzying array of moving parts, algorithms that model everything from dwarves’ personalities (some are depressive; many appreciate art) to the climate and economic patterns of the simulated world. It takes a 3d animation studio to create graphics as intricate and true-to-life as the ones seen in Dwarf Fortress. The story of a fortress’s rise and fall isn’t scripted beforehand – in most games narratives progress along an essentially set path – but rather generated on the fly by a multitude of variables. The brothers themselves are often startled by what their game spits out. “We didn’t know that carp were going to eat dwarves,” Zach says. “But we’d written them as carnivorous and roughly the same size as dwarves so that just happened, and it was great.”

Dwarf Fortress may not look real, but once you’re hooked, it feels vast, enveloping, alive. To control your world, you toggle between multiple menus of text commands; seemingly simple acts like planting crops and forging weapons require involved choices about soil and season and smelting and ores. A micromanager’s dream, the game gleefully blurs the distinction between painstaking labor and creative thrill.

You can subscribe and download the show via iTunes, and if you do I’d love it if you had time to leave an honest review.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

You can also check out the show via the NewbQuest YouTube channel, if you prefer that format. If you do I’d appreciate if you’d subscribe or leave a comment over there.

To learn more about Tarn Adams and Dwarf Fortress, and to download the game for free head over to Bay 12 Games. Thanks again to Tarn for taking some time to talk and thanks to you for checking out the blog and show!

05 Jun

NewbQuest Ep.2: Shawn Allen, Game Designer and Artist for Treachery in BeatDown City

In this episode we interview indie game developer Shawn Allen who is working on Treachery in Beatdown City, a side scrolling beat ’em up with RPG elements which just successfully funded on Kickstarter. We talk about being an indie developer, the Kickstarter process and making art for games.

The Kickstarter video for the recently funded campaign is a great intro to Shawn and his world:

In our interview we had a great conversation about his choices for an 8-bit, retro art style along with ways he was trying to work within that convention to create something new, the challenges of the indie lifestyle, creating a game targeting Playstation and working with Sony, collaborating with artists, musicians and coders and much more.

You can subscribe and download the show via iTunes, and if you do I’d love it if you had time to leave an honest review. Note: right now the show hasn’t appeared in the iTunes directory, for now use this link to subscribe.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

You can also check out the show via the NewbQuest YouTube channel, if you prefer that format. If you do I’d appreciate if you’d subscribe or leave a comment over there.

To learn more about Shawn Allen and his game Treachery in Beatdown City you can head over to www.beatdowncity.com and you can follow Shawn on Twitter at @anuchallenger

Thanks again to Shawn for taking the time to come on and talk, and to you for checking out the blog and the show!

05 Jun

NewbQuest Ep. 1: Interview with Noel Berry, Game Designer and Developer of Skytorn

In this first episode of the brand new NewbQuest podcast I sat down with Noel Berry, who is the game designer and lead programmer on Skytorn.

Skytorn is a procedurally generated action adventure game, set in the ruins of a fallen world.

“Centuries after a mysterious cataclysm tore the world apart, humans have taken to the skies – ferrying their kin in airships, searching the remains for artifacts and survivors. Explorer Aiva ventures out on her first dive, landing on an uncharted island. Alone and armed only with a shovel, she is determined to carve her own path.”

Plummet through the clouds towards unique unexplored islands.
Observe, hunt or protect strange wildlife.
Converse with cryptic strangers.
Fend off predatory creatures with your trusty shovel.
Uncover ancient structures filled with secrets.
Challenge towering monsters to deadly combat.
Use the dynamic environment in creative ways to survive.

We had a great conversation about Skytorn, game development in general and Noel offered some really helpful advice for those of us who are starting out in the process. A few topics we discussed include:

Are Flash games still a useful place to enter game development and try to monetize?
What tools should you use if you’re new to game development?
Is participating in game jams a good way to get started as an indie developer?

You can subscribe to the show via iTunes as a podcast, and if you choose to do so we’d love it if you’d subscribe and leave us a review.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

You can also watch the video of the interview via our YouTube page and if that’s your preferred format we’d appreciate if you could like, subscribe or comment over there. Somehow I only recorded Noel’s camera for the video, which is a little weird. Whoops! Still working out the bugs, but the show must go on.

I’d just like to offer a big thanks to Noel for taking some time to come on the show and to you for checking it out!

To learn more about Noel you can check him out at his website, for more on Skytorn you can head to it’s official site and to follow Noel on twitter you can head here.